When we first learn to turn we do what we call up-unweighting or most extended at edge change. This means we ride across the hill in a flexed stance and extend (or get taller) to unweight the engaged edge enabling us to transfer to our new edge then get lower throughout the turn, to then rise again for the next edge change...

Later we start to play around with down-unweighting or most flexed at edge change. This means we are riding across the hill extended or tall, and we flex (aka bend our knees & ankles aka retract our legs) to unweight the edge enabling us to transfer to our new edge, we then extend through the turn, to flex again. What Snowolf was suggesting is a strong retraction at edge change. Meaning ride tall across the hill and suck your legs up to you to enable the edge change.

Watch some videos on down-unweighting or dynamic turns. This will explain this topic more, as there is a lot more to the timing of it. Such as changing your edge with the board traveling across the fall line, extend your legs laterally or across the hill, so that immediately after the apex (your board is just starting to turn across the hill) your most extended and you can begin flexing for your next turn.

Just some personal info, I ride a proto ctx 158, and I ride in centered in deep cascade concrete.

If you just ride "leaning back" you become very static; you cant really flex and extend as you need to for good turn initiation and completion.

Instead of leaning back to prevent a nose dive, pull the nose of the board up toward you which will cause you to bend your front ankle and knee. This is a retraction. I am sure you guys by now have done at least a few small jumps right? What do we do after take off? We suck our legs up to pull the board up toward us; this is a retraction often referred to as "raising the landing gear".

Now you don`t have to retract or extend both legs as a unit. You can retract just one leg kind of like we do when riding bumps or even doing an Ollie or a Nollie. Stay centered and pull the nose up out of the powder toward you. Granted, this is going to feel weird and it will take you a few tries to feel it but when you do, you will be able to ride powder without either setting your bindings all the way back or getting that intense back leg burn.

You will still get some of that burn but you will with a total set back stance as well. This keeps your board`s functionality at peak where it was designed to be. You don`t want to be dropping a 50 degree pitch even in deep powder with your bindings all of the way back. You are not going to have a great success at initiating your turns and as a result of the delay in doing so, the turn completion is going to go to hell as well.

Now, I am not saying there is not a time to shift aft. There certainly is, just dont stay back there the whole time. When we do these fore-aft shift, we return to neutral which is centered. In powder, shift aft as needed if you see that a front leg retraction will noe be enough to prevent the dive. After the condition passes, return to neutral.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bear5001

What Snowolf was suggesting is a strong retraction at edge change. Meaning ride tall across the hill and suck your legs up to you to enable the edge change.

This is making sense now. I was trying to ride just leaning back and my turns felt very stiff and uncoordinated. And I actually was getting thrown off balance when making my turns from toe to heel, coming forward a bit off balance and nose diving. This was all in the knee deep pow on one particular run, which is probably 38 degrees. Although tomahawking is pow that deep is pretty fun too, I would like to just rips turns down. Other runs where it was ankle/calf deep, I wasn't focusing on leaning back while riding and had much smoother turns. I just assumed I should have moved my bindings back.

So a retraction of the front foot while initiating turns will help keep from nose diving, along with the normal dynamic riding is what you guys are telling me? I like the reference of jumping and one leg like an ollie, but instead of popping off like following through with it, I'm initiating my turn? How much is a rockered or a camber-rocker-camber hybrid going to help with this, compared to my current cambered board? I'm going to be demoing a few boards next week, so I'm curious what to expect. Although nature isn't going to help me with any pow.

And thanks for the help fellas

Here's what I was trying to conquer in the knee deep, riding down just about dead center - Dragon's Back at Mammoth

Here's what I was trying to conquer in the knee deep, riding down just about dead center - Dragon's Back at Mammoth

whoa....I can't believe you put that many words into that one run down dragons back!!!.....Here is my version of that day "there was some pow and I made some turns and picked up way too much speed. Then I crashed real hard." sometimes I wish I could be so verbose about riding but i quite enjoyed reading your POV of that run. Oh except you left out the part about the sketchy as fuck traverse

Maybe I would suck less if I could think about it more? But then again I get out there a lot more then you sorry

Ive decided there's one answer to all of my snowboarding problems.

Get lower. Bend knees more.

__________________if a cat fucked a shark, the babies would be called women.snowklinger

whoa....I can't believe you put that many words into that one run down dragons back!!!.....Here is my version of that day "there was some pow and I made some turns and then I crashed real hard." sometimes I wish I could be so verbose about riding but i quite enjoyed reading your POV of that run

Maybe I would suck less if I could think about it more? But then again I get out there a lot more then you sorry

Ive decided there's one answer to all of my snowboarding problems.

Get lower. Bend knees more.

Lol... yeah when I actually tell myself get lower, bend knees more, then actually do it I ride about 1 million times better. By default I always end up with straight legs.

SnoWolf. Agree with your thinking about sidecut, BUT: (love to talk about this shit) if you look at an extreme pow board say the The Euphoria (or any Noboard)

we have the sidecut opposite of a regular board, or in the case of the Hoverraft for example

the tail is so short and stiff and the board so set back naturally that you will ride in the back no matter what and they are both pow specific sticks.

My point is that when you are riding deep pow at a speed you should float no matter what position your are in. But at slower speed or on lower angle slopes, a set back will keep the nose up and, as I experienced on the JJ board, make it SO much easier and enjoyable. Either on 2 feet of fresh or on the same , later when i't s all trashed. The board on a wheelie trashes trough it instead of you having to lift it every time.

On the other hand I love to carve centered on both ( Arbor and JJ) on more firm and groomer days...to use and engage all of the sidecut the way it was designed to.

I usually rock the widest stance available (6'3" on a 157 or 161) so on powder days I just move the front foot back one or two spaces. I find I can put more weight on the front foot and it relieves back leg fatigue. I also find that a slightly more narrow stance makes the board more maneuverable in the deep stuff, since the nose is higher out of the snow.

Couple of things on this. One is that a board that is manufactured with setback also is designed specifically for that and the binding reference points are matched with the flex of the board and the sidecut. There is a huge difference between a board designed to be ridden like this and just moving your bindings back on a board that is designed to have the bindings more centered. Sure, you can ride it and usually ride it just fine but it wont be quite as efficient and there will be some handling issues when you are not in deep powder.

Secondly, the retraction technique also works extremely well on a powder specific board with a lot of setback. It works amazingly well on a regular board too. Today, I was hitting deep (knee to waist deep) powder stashes and I am a 190 pound guy riding a 156 Gnu Billy Goat and never got stuck or took a single tomohawk.....

@ Bear5001, Along with the retraction at edge change, I have also been having great success with using retractions of the front foot like this even when not changing edges but when I feel the nose starting to get "sucked down". Today was a great example of this when I was riding in the great powder off of Vista. From a technical AASi standpoint, I am not sure is this is "correct" but it sure seemed to improve my powder riding and you know how deep some of those areas were (waits deep wind deposits and as I am sure you heard, several of us got first tracks on Cascade when they opened it up at 3:00. I made 3 runs before the 3:45 lineup. Would like to hear your thoughts about doing this the way I was today...

Nice! Forgot about this thread. I think that the board should still be balanced at the most setback position but you sure can feel the difference.

If you feel like your about to go down, whether it's the nose diving, or other things putting us off balance, anything is acceptable to regain our balance... Maintaining fluid movements throughout every turn will help us not get off balance and remove the need for recovery moves.